Ozzy Osbourne's favourite Paul McCartney song

(Credits: Far Out / Ozzy Osbourne / Linda McCartney)

Towards the end of the 1960s, The Beatles’ collective momentum faltered as the four members became increasingly disillusioned. After the public announcement of the band’s dissolution arrived in April 1970, fans mourned the end of an era. However, The Beatles had run their race and changed history for good. With this announcement, they passed the baton to a new generation of rock stars, including Ozzy Osbourne.

Most palpably, The Beatles’ influence lived on in bands that bridged the psychedelic rock wave into the subsequent complexities of prog-rock. Notably, bands like Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd ran with the abstract qualities of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in their early masterpieces. Though less pronounced, The Beatles also had a hand in the emergence of heavy metal.

Some musicologists trace heavy metal back to ‘Helter Skelter’, Paul McCartney’s punchy hit from The White Album. Still, others claim John Entwistle of The Who invented metal a few years prior with ‘Boris the Spider’. This is a valid counter-argument, given that McCartney admitted to the Who’s influence. “The Who had made some track that was the loudest, the most raucous rock ‘n roll, the dirtiest thing they’d ever done,” he reflected on ‘Helter Skelter’ in 1985. “And we decided to do the loudest, nastiest, sweatiest rock number we could.”

Whatever the weather, The Beatles’ influence on metal was vast yet mostly indirect and untraceable. Ozzy Osbourne lives on as one of the most obvious links, given that he is a huge lifelong fan. ‘Helter Skelter’ almost certainly raised an eyebrow in 1968, but the Fab Four had won him over already with some surprisingly softer favourites like ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude’.

Although we generally associate John Lennon with The Beatles’ coarser and more provocative music, most of Osbourne’s favourite Beatles songs seem to hail from the McCartney side of the partnership. Over the years, the pair have met several times and conveyed a charming degree of mutual appreciation. “I’m a big Beatles fan, and when I first met Paul McCartney, it was like meeting Jesus Christ,” Ozzy said on The Osbournes podcast. “He was a very nice man, a very nice man.”

Speaking to The Sun on another occasion, Osbourne said that meeting McCartney for the first time was “the highlight of my life”. This statement is no exaggeration, either. The Sabbath singer has repeatedly explained the pivotal effect of The Beatles on his life. “Imagine you go to bed today, and the world is black and white, and then you wake up, and everything’s in colour,” he told Blabbermouth. “That’s what it was like!’ That’s the profound effect it had on me.”

By the time The Beatles broke up in 1970, Osbourne had already made a name for himself with Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut album, and Paranoid was just around the corner. Through the heady highs and crippling lows of his career, he never forgot his biggest influences and followed the Beatles’ solo careers closely.

When picking out his top ten favourite songs for a 2004 feature with Rolling Stone, Osbourne picked out three Beatles classics and also saved a space for McCartney and Wings’ song ‘Live and Let Die’, the title track for the 1973 James Bond movie of the same name. Osbourne called the symphonic rock anthem “a fucking great song” before adding: “I Love it!”